Friday, March 29, 2013

It is taking me a long time to process ALL of my thoughts on our New York trip this year. It was unreal, like gives you chills, arm hairs on end, stirs your soul to remember it unreal. These videos by Vicki Grafton and Megan Soh have done it a lot of justice though.

Friendly faces and flowers everywhere, completely surrounded by other independent artful florists who know all the little cuts and scrapes that come with this not for sissies job we share. Lots of moments of feeling understood, surrounded by sisters letting your guard down as tears of gratitude well up and a few slip over the edge.

Balancing family life with a wedding profession is like juggling fine china in public with no training. We need to be able to talk about how hard this is, the exhaustion and guilt offset by the thrill of creating inspired designs and being part of the most important day in our clients lives.

I don't think Holly Heider Chapple knew the magnitude of what she had started when she founded the Chapel Designers as it says on her site: Created "most importantly to collaborate and share new inspiration with each other. These relationships have become invaluable to each of the Chapel Designers as both strong industry relationships and close friendships have been born."

Here are some photos that I took on the trip... This first one is of a bouquet I made day 2 at David Beahm's Studio in Brooklyn. The instruction and inspiration for the european style bouquet created in a foam holder were from Francoise Weeks. Francoise is so generous with her talent she teaches design classes all year in Portland.

The below is Holly and us all at the flower market at early oclock (notice all the coffees gripped tightly in our exhasted hands this was day 3 and we have been partying for 50 hours straight :)

Here is Susan of Passionflower events with the passionflower vine at G. Page our favorite wholesaler an Susan with Gato the friendlies flower cat quite fat which I imagine is part of what makes him so friendly (treats please :)... and Susan with the leggiest Papyrus I've ever seen

Drumroll please...... Below is a stunning design by Ariella Chezar (top left) right next to a little design by me and Susan because we got to make a companion piece to go next to Ariella's on the tablescape!!! And all of this happened on a sunny afternoon at the RareView roof top bar a top the hilton that we stayed at on 26th in the fashion district..... I mean COME ON you can't even tell about this trip without sounding like a bratty brag face :)

I'll tell you more about it when I get back this weekend and share tons of photos from the flower market and all our design classes including the one I am about to attend with Ariella Chezar on the rooftop bar at the Hilton Fashion District (pinch me)